October 31, 2008
  New York Jets Fly with New Training Facility

by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you . . . design a state-of-the art training facility for a professional sports team?

Summary: Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) has designed the new 200,000-square-foot training facility and corporate headquarters for the New York Jets, located in Florham Park, N.J. Open in September, the Jets facility is the largest training facility in the National Football League.

The Atlantic Health Jets Training Center includes a two-story glass office building, three natural turf football fields, one exterior artificial turf field, and a field house with a 95-foot-high ceiling that includes an artificial turf surface. Inside, there are medical, rehabilitation, and training rooms, including 12,000 square feet comprising a weight room, locker rooms, therapy pools, an auditorium, a classroom, coach’s atrium, two cafeterias, and the owner’s suite—plus a corporate hospitality wing. The entire facility incorporates glass to maximize views of—what else?—football fields from any space and entry.

Jetting along
SOM partner-in-charge Roger Duffy, FAIA, led the design of the Jets facility. “When people think about football, they don’t think about architecture,” says Duffy. “Football is business. The idea was to create a training and corporate environment to enable the Jets to train at a higher level. We had great collaboration from the Jets to drive our design solution. We wanted to make this facility state-of-the art.”

Duffy explains that the organization of the facility comes from the playing fields themselves. “We wanted the Jets facility to center on the heart of the football, that is, the football fields. And we wanted to provide the New York Jets with a competitive advantage by having one campus for corporate operations and one for training, health, and fitness. We wanted to organize it as a singularity, one that is compiled with the playing field. For example, the integer of the yard line is integrated throughout the building—in the flooring, the lighting, and the ceilings, to point up football. It is a new typology, with the reason being to create a performance advantage to the Jets.”

Corporate center
Duffy points out that the focus of designing the structure was always on the Jets as a corporation. “The act of football influenced our typology,” he says. “But, the Jets facility is also a corporate center that we embraced as special.” Duffy underscores that in the design it was important to mitigate the mass of the field house with the corporate wing to maintain a proper scale between the two to maintain an emphasis on the Jets’ operations.

Learning spaces extend out into “circulation spaces” to create an environment that encourages learning beyond the classrooms and fields. State-of-the art audio and visual systems are throughout the building to facilitate research, learning, and training.

The Jets teamed with Atlantic Health to develop the operation’s health, fitness, and rehabilitation rooms. “It is important to keep the players healthy,” Duffy says. Anti-microbial materials, including on the upholstery and the paints, were used throughout to minimize infections and maintain a healthy team and staff. “It promotes a clean environment,” Duffy notes, adding that there was one other challenge: “Finding furniture to support the large players.”

  

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Photos
Photographs © Florian Holzherr.
1. The New York Jets facility incorporates glass to maximize views.
2. The field house has a 95-foot-high ceiling and artificial turf field.
3. All spaces overlook the football field.
4. The Jets facility includes three natural turf football fields and one artificial turf field.

See more photos.